Dive 2000 Dive Club - Sydney :: Vanuatu Dive Fun

In addition to 14 divers and one non-diving partner, we also brought along two future divers (Coral and Nadia) for their first taste of a Dive 2000 holiday. After packing our large assortment of bags into one van, we all loaded into another to be transferred to Hideaway Island. The vans dropped us and our luggage on a beach in the dark, and a quick ferry ride under the moon and stars brought us to Hideaway Island Resort.

Hideaway Island

Hideaway Island Resort is a Melanesian style resort situated on Hideaway Island, part of a small coral atoll, which is one of Vanuatu’s only Marine Sanctuaries. It is truly an island escape with few modern distractions. There is a generator on the providing power to the island 24hrs/day, and water is fed to the island from the top of the Cascade waterfalls. The waters surrounding the island are a gorgeous turquoise colour and contain a variety of beautiful coral reefs, a few wrecks, and a multitude of fish and other marine life.

There are a large number of dive sites within 15 minutes of the shore, and with dive site such as the pink panther, west side story, the abyss, the lion’s den, hangover reef, Gotham city, and the Aloara wreck, just to name a few. In addition to the fantastic diving within a stone’s throw from the resort, I think everyone that went on this trip will agree that the resort restaurant had some of the best food in Vanuatu!

And now for the Diving… and of course a bit of fun topside

Scott (aka Salmon Boy) and I went with a fantastic group of Dive 2000 divers to this extraordinary location for a week of diving the warm, clear, tropical waters of Vanuatu. Naturally, Scott and I brought along our 6.5mm semidry wetsuits… the water was 26°C after all. And in case you are wondering, yes we did use them. And just to give you an idea of how warm it really was, Geoffrey (oops… I mean Simon) didn’t even wear a wetsuit for his last few dives!

Anyway, back to the diving, who cares about what big wimps Scott and I are anyway right? I get to stake the claim to doing the first dive in Vanuatu. While everyone else was probably snoozing away, a luxury I gave up ~2.5 years ago when Coral was born, I headed down to the dive shop bright and early and got to meet an absolutely fantastic group of guys who ran the place. Being the lone diver wanting to do the 8:30am dive, the guys at the shop sent me out for a dive with Donald (the DM soon to be Kristy’s new man, seriously, check out the picture on her mobile, he has even called her a few times since our return!).

We dived the Hideaway House reef and it was probably one of the best dives I did, and with my camera in hand, Donald led me on a nice relaxing hour long dive with 20-30 meters of visibility and heaps to photograph. I saw tons of fish, including many varieties of the much loved and photographed anemone fish, a few really colourful nudis, some friendly cleaner shrimp which were happy to hop on your hand of even in your mouth and clean away, and a whole range of other interesting sea creatures. Our dive ended at the famous underwater post office, where Donald collected the mail, and of course I snapped a few more pictures. The underwater post office sits in about 2-3 meters of water in an absolutely beautiful area full of tropical fish and scattered reef perfect for both snorkelers and divers.

The rest of the group dragged themselves out of bed for the 10:30am excited as they all boarded the boat for a short trip to the dive site.

Being that we had some relatively new divers, there were many “firsts” on this trip. No, no… not those sort of “firsts!” Although, there is a rather risqué picture of Scott and Paul floating around, but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, for some, it was there first tropical water diving experience, and it didn’t fail to deliver some fantastic diving. Andy B and Milli have both said to me since our return that the diving was the definitely highlight of the trip. I think everyone will agree though that the group of people who went on the trip took a close second. We saw heaps of lionfish, a few white tip reef shark, and a whole host of other colourful fish and interesting critters. Simon got the opportunity to try out his newly purchased camera equipment and only managed to blind a few fish in the process. In the end though, he did end up with some very nice pictures for his first attempt at underwater photography. Susie was also really starting to develop the underwater photography bug and came away with some nice shots as well. Kristy, on the other hand, concentrated more on her topside photography… particularly shots Khalen and Donald (two of our local DMs).

Paul the duck boy had a first as well on this trip, he finally managed to hover! Seriously, he learned how to do it all by himself, neither Scott nor I had to yank him back down from the surface once. He even came away from the trip with a little dive mascot which Scott attached to his tank…. A rubber duckie. We have many pictures of Paul with his rubber duckie, and just in case anyone has ever wondered what happens to a rubber duckie at depth, just check out the pictures…. It becomes a duck pancake.

Besides the diving, the group had a lot of fun topside as well. The entire group made a visit to the Cascade waterfalls, where many of us (some a bit more willingly than others) jumped in the crystal clear (cold!) pools of water and played in the falls. Rob and Lisa celebrated their 5 year anniversary with a sunset horseback ride on the beach. Simon, Andy P, and Mark did some off road buggy riding along the beach and through the jungle…. Literally!

Wojciech, his wife Iwona, and little Nadia went on a tour of the main island, which Iwona said was the highlight of her holiday. Liz, the moonlight swimmer, really enjoyed having a pool at her disposal and took full advantage of it every night, while, Kristy, the human solar powered light bulb, enjoyed the sun so much that she was glowing on the flight back. For Andy B and Milli, this was their last major holiday before “the big day.” I imagine it made a great pre-wedding getaway for them.

I think everyone who went will agree that it was a fantastic holiday made even better by the great company we were in. We all managed to sit down for dinner and a few drinks together every night. The evenings usually ended in a small party at someone’s bungalow complete with entertainment ranging from Simon’s acrobatics on a hammock, a special appearance by the newly formed singing group Diva 2000, and of course Kristy’s rendition on London Underground (We have video footage!).

Besides some minor sunburns, scratches, mossie bites, hangovers etc., the only major incident occurred the night before we left when Coral took a nasty tumble down the stairs in the restaurant resulting in quite a bit of blood, lots of tears, and a possible scar on her chin to always remind her of the trip she took to Vanuatu when she was 2.5 years old. It was good to see that all of the divers and the dive shop were well prepared though as it seemed we had about 10 first aid kits at our disposal after the accident occurred.

After a only a week on the island, the holiday just seemed to end too quickly, and we were all quite jealous to see Andy P and Mark head off to Espiritu Santo for a week of diving on the SS President Coolidge, while the rest of us had to head back to Sydney and back to work. Fortunately, Sydney put on a beautiful, sunny day for our return, but that didn’t stop Scott from immediately getting to work on planning the destination for his next Dive 2000 trip to Fiji in 2009.